D&C: Becoming A "Weekday Warrior" For A Year

“you’ve got the regular boarders, like me, and then you’ve got the Weekday Warriors; they board here, but they’re all rich kids who live in Birmingham and go home to their parents’ air-conditioned mansions every weekend…” – Looking for Alaska, p13.

well, I don’t live in Birmingham, neither am I rich, and I stay home more than I stay out right now, but still, the term “Weekday Warrior” makes it easier to explain to people, if only most of them read this book.

but now you know what that means.

this month marked a new year of living out so I thought I’d write a post about the previous year.

needless to say, since I’m a Weekday Warrior, there’s really not much “living on your own” things to learn, except if you count learning to avoid traffic jam as one. I needn’t do laundry and we didn’t get to cook because the landlord didn’t allow us.

nonetheless, there’re things that you can only experience when you leave the comforts of your bed at home.

the first thing for sure is to learn to live with another person. although I’ve been sharing room with my sisters all these years, the capacity of siblings’ tolerance tanks is usually higher than outsiders.

well, my roommate’s a pretty simple person, and we’re quite the same when it comes to laziness (seriously, no one wins if we participate in a laziness contest). only thing is that I’ve to make sure my clothing’s not all over the room (read: bra) but on the chair that I claimed as mine.

another is late night talks that only happen when you sleep with friends instead of family. or maybe it’s just me and my siblings, my sister starts nagging me if I don’t turn off the lights after 2330.

anyway, during my stay outside, there’re a number of impromptu night talks ending as late as 3 am that leads to extreme grogginess the next day.

3 am and I can still bet you, we’re not the latest to sleep because one of our housemate studies architecture (or more commonly known as architorture in our school) and the other practically lives in the world of Ancients where he destroys his opponent’s tower (translate: DotA).

living with this assortment of people I’ve learnt to recognize who’s back and who’s not. lemme walk you through this as if you’re one of us.

archi housemate’s normally not home 80% of the time and you know he is when you hear footsteps on the staircase or the sound of shower in the middle of the night. the keywords here are: sounds. in the middle of the night. and if you hear screams once you’ve landed on the top floor, fear not, that’s just DotA housemate sending commands through Skype and overreacting when he’s been attacked. in short, scream = DotA housemate’s home, no scream = DotA housemate’s not home. that easy.

now talk about grogginess. even though my place is considered far compared to other houses, we’re actually pretty motivated to walk all the way back during our breaks just to have that one hour of extra sleep. because aye, we paid so why not?

I didn’t like the house. I still don’t like it. the bathroom’s small. the landlord promised to clean it every fortnight but didn’t. our room flooded twice. but I’ve come to accept it and at times when I need a faster WiFi and when mom starts to nag, this place seems like a haven. haha.

and at least, my ears aren’t tortured by housemates who sing when they bath, because I’m usually the one who does that in the house. hah.